AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We stay like that for a long moment, until I can swallow normally.
“You came for me?” I ask.
“Willow wanted first crack at it,” he says, rubbing my back. “But, you know. No one can cure an Aurora thundercloud quite like me.”
That’s true.
Through panic attacks and hospital stays and recovery, nightmares and tantrums andGod, the need to escape my life—he’s always been the one to guide me back from the ledge.
“Do you want to go back in?” he asks.
I take a deep breath, feeling more grounded than before.
“Do you love me?” I reply.
He eyes me like I’m crazy, yes, but also sparkling and magical. Like he’s not quite sure how we got here. “I’m obsessed with you, sunshine.”
Same thing.
I nod to him. “Then let’s go back in.”
Beth doesn’t really skate. Hasn’t in all the time I’ve known her, minus when we went out on the Frog Pond in Boston. And look how well that turned out, right? But she’s a good sport about coming down to the arena and lacing into the pair of skates I hand her.
I put on my own, which have traveled with me from New York.
I send a quick text, then leave my phone on the bench in the locker room. I pick up a stick and point at the one she can take, and we head to the rink.
She didn’t ask why I wanted her to come with me, when literallyanyonewould be more suited to getting out on the ice than her. She doesn’t really ask many questions at all, just follows me to the ice.
The door opens inward. I suck in a deep breath of cool air and step out.
My first step, I wobble, much to my chagrin. Some hockey player I am. I right myself on the next step, slowly easing into it. Until I’m moving faster, suddenly racing across the glossy ice.
Clean, new ice was a luxury I only got once in a while. Especially when I was younger. When Dad made me wait until after the hockey players had warmed up and conditioned—arguably the most chaotic time on the ice—to join him. To skate after him in my pink helmet, my short stick in my grip.
I push that memory away.
“Aurora!” Beth calls. “I can’t go as fast as you.”
I ignore her, digging into the ice on the far side and sending a shower of snow into the boards. I drop a puck from my pocket, stolen from Knox’s room, and adjust my grip on my stick. I cradle the puck, moving back toward the far goal, and twist my wrist in a smooth shot—that flies into the net with the slightestwhooshof air.
Worth it.
I fish out the puck and come back to Beth, dropping my stick and grabbing her hands. She’s barely standing, but I get her out onto the ice. Drag her, really. She does nothing but keep her skates straight, and she’s helpless to stop me.
My smile fades.
It didn’t occur to me until I wrote more. Who in my life, who inhis, would’ve been able to convince him I cheated?
Only someone who knew me well.
Only someone whowantedus to break up.
After the awkward lunch, Knox and Miles went to meet up with the guys, and I reread the last chapter I wrote. The one where I unwittingly chronicled Beth’s envy and desire.
It was weird, reading it back. I hadn’t noticed when I was writing it. Hadn’t noticed how she took a front-and-center approach to Knox, putting herself in his line of sight again and again.
“Were you ever really my friend?” I release her hand and back out of her reach.
